It seems that a general design philosophy is that giving players choice - meaning, personalized control over game option preferences - is a very good thing. Some games go to great lengths to allow players to customize every aspect of their gameplay experience. I''m not (just) talking about modding here. Many games let you make your own maps, set difficulty levels during gameplay, or even skip sections of the game. Sometimes, though, allowing the player to choose things like this can be a bad thing. A really bad thing. Why? Here''s a clear example: Cheat Codes. Allowing, or even encouraging players to use cheat codes can completely destroy the gameplay of a game for many players. The philosophy behind something like this is, "Hey, if the player has a good time with the cheat codes, they can use them - otherwise, they don''t have to." The problem with this is that a very large number of people don''t possess the self-restraint to focus on what would give them the overall best time with a game. Wondering what the final boss looks like? Spawn him - heck, spawn two of him! He''s too hard to kill? Turn on infinite health and ammo! (25 seconds later) Wow, that sure was cool! But, why even bother playing through the game now? Sometimes, anticipation can be a very potent aspect of enjoyment. By allowing the player to skip ahead, or removing challenges that the player would normally face, a game designer can really hurt the player''s sense of accomplishment and overall enjoyment. Maybe it''s fun to run around with a 9999 damage Sword of Infinite Doom for a few minutes, but afterwards, trying to actually play the game with your paltry Rusty Dagger just isn''t interesting... even if it would have been if the Sword of Infinite doom hadn''t spoiled the pacing for you. This doesn''t just apply to cheat codes. Another good example would be the user-created maps found in Warcraft II and Starcraft. Both of these games are balanced with resource management as a key feature - yet, in both games, multiplayer matches are filled almost exclusively with "Big Game Hunters" maps that provide every player with nearly infinite resources, right where they start. This kind of gameplay can be entertaining for a while, but it doesn''t have anywhere near the lasting appeal of the deeper strategy elements both games possess. Despite this, virtually the only type of map ever played is a Big Game Hunters variation. There is another reason that player choice can be a bad thing, besides the negative effects associated with a lack of player self restraint: The options might not be obvious. Granted, this is more of an interface design issue, but if there is a wide variety of customizable elements in a game, most players may wind up simply failing to notice that one that would otherwise interest them is actually available. This is particularly true if the options must be accessed in a fashion that isn''t immediately obvious, such as through a separate program or by editing a preferences file. So, what are some ways around the problems associated with giving players too much choice? One way that is, in my opinion, fairly clever and works well much of the time is: A Self-Balancing System. These can be great - certain options are only available after certain criteria are met. One great example of this is Goldeneye 007. In that game, you must complete certain game objectives in order to have cheats available to you. This helps the game gain the lasting appeal that cheat codes provide, without spoiling the gameplay by having them available too early. Another self-balancing system would be one that would, for example, allow players to make up their own magic spells, but increase costs whenever the spell''s power was increased (this can be particularly good with depreciating returns, as if a Fireball''s damage-to-mana ratio became steadily worse as the overall damage was raised). An example of this is in Freedom Force. In that game, you can give your superheroes virtually any incredibly powerful abilities you want, but you won''t be able to afford to recruit them if you go too overboard with it. So, what does everyone think? Can player choice be dangerous? What things can be done to preserve the good aspects of player choice without including the bad ones?

Let me venture an opinion. As long as it follows the rules of the game, customization is ok. And let it be known that customization is one of the 3 gameplay elements that I chase.

Cheat Codes typically don''t follow the rules of the game, hence are pretty dangerous things to have around.

As far as temptation and lack of user self control, I think it''s a very silly way to start designing games. Some people are going to want to take the easy way out, and I think that''s acceptable. While I don''t particularly want people to cheat, I''m not going worry myself so much about the fact that someone might cheat, or play a mod, or use a character editor. Instead I''ll deal with the problem by designing my games to have as few reasons as possible to cheat in them. (Admittedly, this all goes out the window in multiplayer gaming)

A lot of my opinions on this topic sort of overlap with my opinions on the save game topic, so I hope you''ve read them both. In a broad sense, they''re the same sort of thing.

If it''s a worry about the player cheating to see what the last boss looks like, then I''d guess the monsters around now suck enough that the player''s bored. If it''s a worry that the player decides to whip himself up a Sword of Infinite doom, maybe I should check and see if he''s getting enough stuff early on.

As far as the user created maps go, maybe those are the most common because they''re maps people find the most enjoyable? I know that in both of the games you mentioned, I found resource management to be a pain in the butt. If I wanted to survive at all, the key was to spread myself thin at the beginning trying to capture as many key resource nodes as possible. For me, being a slow and steady builder, that meant that I''d be hamstrung in the early stages of the game, struggle through the middle, and die of starvation. So, to me, the super resource filled maps were a nice change because I could expand slowly but not starve.

Now, let''s counter some of my own opinions. In Starcraft, there''s a game speed option. Everyone I know sets it to the maximum speed possible. I don''t like it that fast, because my skill set (tactical command of 3-15 units) doesn''t establish itself well at that pace.

I''d attribute the use of the high speed to the fact that watching harvesters slowly accumulate cash, or watching the progress bar fill on that battle cruiser is boring, and fills up far too much of the early portion of gameplay.

Now, I do know someone who used the hacks for counter-strike, starcraft, Diablo 2, Everquest and probablly more games. For CS (the game I had the most time to observe with)the person who got it first did so because he was bored with the game. He was playing because people he knew were playing, he''d progressed about as far as he could without serious work, and he was looking for amusing things to do. He usually didn''t play with the hacks, just kept them around. Out of the people he showed it to, one person picked it up. The person who picked it up liked the game, wanted to be good at it, but was frusterated with constantly being killed at it.

With starcraft, the map hack got picked up after a stinging series of losses to people using it. "Everyone else uses it." was the excuse. Since the rest of us only played LAN games anyway, it wasn''t an issue for us, and we played without it.

Everquest. The same peson picked up the hack as the previous two. My distilation of the reasons for that is that Everquest is tedious, and he''d spent a 25 hour spree trying to get a guy to drop the item he wanted. And after looking at the well documented lists of stuff available in the game that he''d never be able to get, he got a little angry, and decided to try to have some fun with the game on his terms.

Diablo II. By now, he''d pretty well started checkng out cheats where ever he could find them, and wasn''t interested in playing the game much, just seeing some of the stuff in it. When some of the rest of us started playing the game seriously, so did he. This is the game where I cheated pretty often though. While the core gameplay was fun for me, the level improvement system killed the game. Oh, it turns out those three points I put in Ice Bolt would have been better in Ice Blast, so if I''d just waited three levels, and used a magic staff to make it past that last part, I''d be having an easier time now. Crap. Time to start over. (Player percieved failure) After about the fifth or sixth such tactical blunder caused in part by bad game documentation, in part by the innate randomness of everything in the game, and in part by my unwillingness to have ''wasted'' any points, I grew frusterated enough to use an editor to make the characters the way I would have made them if I knew at the beginning what I knew then. Then, after that, well, you know, I don''t have enough room to store all these special rare items they''re giving me, but they''re collector''s stuff, so being a collector type, I want to keep them all, so let me just save them, in case I ever want them again. Eventually, I caught on to the fact that I wasn''t having any fun with the editor and started over. But there were still two things that see common use in my circles. The first is to unlock the bonus level. 1 time per character sucks, because the first time almost always ended with death. Hope you enjoyed your bonus stage. The other was on an item enhancement that was granted once through the game. Sometimes the items that came out of that were so ridiculous, we''d have to try again.


Wow. I just rambled all over the place there. But, my theory on cheats is that they''re something that we can reduce the use of by simply designing games that are better. If there''s a sense of trust in the designer''s ability to pace things, and make a fun expierence, there''s less reason to cheat. It seems like situations where a person would be tempted to cheat would arisze from design mistakes.

Wow. Barely got into the first example of that.
Still gotta hit what general aspects of customization allow fundamental changes to the game structure, and when those sorts of options are good and bad. But my mind has gone on strike. So I''ll have to finish up my thoughs later.

As far as the systems you mentioned as being good ideas, I think that those are ultimately because they''re constrained to working with a situation.

Hooope to contniuue this later, like sometime my monitor isn''t shifting its weight around. OR more accurately the focus of my eyes are suffereing form what they can input, thus renering for me a scene where things are off like ifI''m look ing at the monitor then the things near the edges seem to be dancing and moving. and straight lines are now on the verge of bending. YEah, way too tired, and I''m still typing it out.

quote: Original post by ThoughtBubble
As far as temptation and lack of user self control, I think it's a very silly way to start designing games. Some people are going to want to take the easy way out, and I think that's acceptable. While I don't particularly want people to cheat, I'm not going worry myself so much about the fact that someone might cheat, or play a mod, or use a character editor. Instead I'll deal with the problem by designing my games to have as few reasons as possible to cheat in them. (Admittedly, this all goes out the window in multiplayer gaming)

I agree 100%. Besides, if you take away features so that weak willed players with ADD can get the full benefit of your game, you are removing features that other players might enjoy, or even find essential. You can't please all people all of the time. Besides, the weak willed people with ADD will probably never bother finishing your game anyway.

As for things like the Starcraft money maps, I don't see any problem with that either. Maps like Big Game Hunters remove a lot of the resource management hassles that a lot of players don't enjoy, or are simply rubbish at, and lets them concentrate on killing each other. The fact that this removes a lot of the 'strategy' element is a fault of the game rules, not the players.


[edited by - Sandman on May 29, 2002 6:56:20 AM]

One thing missing here so far is that giving more choice is more work and more things you can screw up.

A good example is Fallout Tactics. You can choose to play real-time or turn-based - but both suck. If they had decided on just one or the other the game would have been much better, as it is it really isn''t much fun no matter what option you pick.

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About Big Game Hunters - when you first play Starcraft managing resources is tough. So people take the easy way out and play BGH, not realizing that much of the strategy comes from resource management, making decisions about what to build. On BGH you basically build everything and mob each other. It''s fun for a while but doesn''t have much lasting appeal. The problem is that, rather than learn, people take the easy way out and never realize they are missing an important part of the game. It just doesn''t make for interesting gameplay.

Sure, there are a lot of people who without BGH would get frustrated and quit playing. But there are also a lot of people who would appreciate the game depth *more* if they were forced to stop being so lazy and actually learn how to play. And right now a lot of people are unhappy with Starcraft because all you can find to play is BGH.

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In general having more options or choices is neither better nor worse. More options means you might appeal to more people, but it also means each individual option will be worse. Opportunity cost - the time you spend adding options is time you could spend improving on existing ones. Certain options like the timing choice in Fallout Tactics are fundamentally too different to work well together, without at least some much more careful planning.

I owuld also point out that there is no such thing as "removing" options, for the most part. Your game starts with NO options, they only appear as you add or enable them.

My personal take is that cheating that affects multiplayer directly or indirectly should be thwarted at every possible opportunity, but cheating in single player should be available upon request.

In many games, no, most games, I cheat near the end. My interest in the gameplay has waned to the point that I''m no longer willing to play the game for any other reason than the story, and the rest could be an FMV at that point. At that point, I cheat, but there''s always a limit to how much I cheat if such a limit is possible. In Deus Ex, for example, I cheated, and gave myself all the augs and fully upgraded them all. God mode was available, but I didn''t use it. In Fallout, I cheated to give myself such awe-inspiring fast-talking skills that I could buy something for next to nothing and sell it back for a huge wad of cash. I gave myself 300% in two skills(of many), rather than all. I gave myself 10 intelligence so I could have all the dialog options available to me. In Final Fantasy VII, I cheated near the end because I was unable to defeat the Emerald Weapon, and wanted to see what it would give me.(I gave myself 5 master materia of each type, and 5 of each blue materia, but never used the trainer to give myself money or life or MP)

And if you say cheating is not fun, you probably haven''t tried to cheat in the right games. Who in their right mind would upgrade their Muscle Strength Aug to max in Deus Ex? Then when you throw enormous crates or explosive and toxic barrels at your enemies, you realize how much fun that is. When you can wipe out a base from a single good sniping position with a stealth pistol, you realize how you should have put your skills towards pistol. When you figure out that giving a single character two master summon materia is beneficial because you can link two different support materia to each, that''s fun.

Being a demigod has always been a theme in literature(from Beowulf to Hercules to Dragonball Z to Superman), why should you prevent your players from enjoying that sensation.

quote: Sometimes, though, allowing the player to choose things like this can be a bad thing. A really bad thing.

Bad from what perspective? you didn't define it clearly. It certainly isn't bad from the marketting perspective. If you want to sell as many copies of the game as possible, then giving players a lot of choices in the way to play is gonna be a good thing.

What are the chances of you hearing this: "Oh here's the game I wanted to buy.. wait a second, it got cheat codes?! and player can create custom maps?!! No way I'm buying this piece of crap!"

heh

[edited by - berserk on May 30, 2002 3:00:48 AM]

quote: Original post by berserk
Bad from what perspective? you didn''t define it clearly.

Bad from the perspective of "making the game the most enjoyable experience feasible for the player".

quote: What are the chances of you hearing this: "Oh here''s the game I wanted to buy.. wait a second, it got cheat codes?! and player can create custom maps?!! No way I''m buying this piece of crap!"

Before buying a new game, I frequently lurk on the message boards for that game to find out how the players view it. If they complain about the same sorts of things that I think would make the game unenjoyable to me, that influences my decision to buy it. Sometimes, the kinds of things they complain about are a result of poorly implemented player choice.
I wouldn''t say, "What? Custom maps? No way I''m buying THAT!", but if I hear people saying that the custom maps result in the gameplay being a BGH-fest like Starcraft, I probably wouldn''t buy the game.

quote: Original post by AnonPoster
The problem is that, rather than learn, people take the easy way out and never realize they are missing an important part of the game. It just doesn''t make for interesting gameplay.

That''s precisely my point. If the players took the time to really try the game the way it was meant to be played, they would probably enjoy it more. This is an instance where, by giving players the option of taking the easy way out, the game has been made worse.

quote: Original post by AnonPoster
And right now a lot of people are unhappy with Starcraft because all you can find to play is BGH.

If there are so many of these BGH haters around, why don''t they just start their own games on different maps? It isn''t exactly rocket science to click CREATE instead of JOIN.

im not getting into it (meaning supplying you that disagree proof). but i agree with the original poster. if you want to retrace my thinking
hint:
the unhappiness i hear bout most games comes from ease / lack of self control. but its not obvious in manifestation so the symptom is treated and not the illness itself.

"Im bored if the game makes me play through the same story line twice" is not properly treated by making sure that player never has to play through the same story part twice. thats the symptom that you would be treating.

quote: Original post by Zorodius
This doesn''t just apply to cheat codes. Another good example would be the user-created maps found in Warcraft II and Starcraft. Both of these games are balanced with resource management as a key feature - yet, in both games, multiplayer matches are filled almost exclusively with "Big Game Hunters" maps that provide every player with nearly infinite resources, right where they start. This kind of gameplay can be entertaining for a while, but it doesn''t have anywhere near the lasting appeal of the deeper strategy elements both games possess. Despite this, virtually the only type of map ever played is a Big Game Hunters variation.

I disagree with this point. The main role of the game when it is sold to the consumer is to play the included missions either single player or multiplayer. This way everyone who plays the game has the same base. So if you join multiplayer, you look for the orginal maps included with the game if you want to play it that way. There is not much point to letting players make their own maps if you are going to limit what they can do. Sure some players will just put everything they can on the map, but you also get people who are creative and you will stifle their creativity by putting in limitations.

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Make it work.
Make it fast.

"Commmmpuuuuterrrr.." --Scotty Star Trek IV:The Voyage Home